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Bitcoin price skyrockets, crashes, rinse, repeat, internet starts investing in tulips

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Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
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people who know nothing about maths... pretty sure the whole crypto currency thing uses rather a lot of maths?
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Ether_Snake did you invest in this?

Nope, said I never would unless bitcoin became "normal" (basically, no longer a speculation-driven currency). And even then I would have no reason to buy bitcoins unless there was some use for me to make out of them.
 
enlighten us.

- bitcoins were created as a proof of concept and were never intended to be used as an actual global currency, and are incapable of scaling to handle a high rate of transactions

- as a deflationary currency, there is no incentive for anyone to ever spend them, only to hoard them, which will prevent bitcoins from ever being adopted as a legit currency

- the most popular exchange is a modified trading site for magic the gathering cards

- exchanges and online wallet sites are frequently hacked, or simply taken offline by the site owner who then disappears with everyone's bitcoins

- cashing out any significant amount of money is a pipe dream
 
- bitcoins were created as a proof of concept and were never intended to be used as an actual global currency, and are incapable of scaling to handle a high rate of transactions

- as a deflationary currency, there is no incentive for anyone to ever spend them, only to hoard them, which will prevent bitcoins from ever being adopted as a legit currency

- the most popular exchange is a modified trading site for magic the gathering cards

- exchanges and online wallet sites are frequently hacked, or simply taken offline by the site owner who then disappears with everyone's bitcoins

- cashing out any significant amount of money is a pipe dream

photo.jpg


The fact there was a 20 percent crash and you have no idea what prompted it is a pretty big tell.

Dude, stop making sens... oh wait
 

bistromathics

facing a bright new dawn
- bitcoins were created as a proof of concept and were never intended to be used as an actual global currency, and are incapable of scaling to handle a high rate of transactions

- as a deflationary currency, there is no incentive for anyone to ever spend them, only to hoard them, which will prevent bitcoins from ever being adopted as a legit currency

- the most popular exchange is a modified trading site for magic the gathering cards

- exchanges and online wallet sites are frequently hacked, or simply taken offline by the site owner who then disappears with everyone's bitcoins

- cashing out any significant amount of money is a pipe dream

Love so much that this is true. Magic the Gathering Online eXchange.

With your infinite wisdom parallax, should I get the crash fear and pull out with my current profits, or wait and see if it goes back up over a thousand?
 
I say, it's going to be a great time to buy once it bottoms out at around $800 or so. These coins will always be around, it will hit all sorts of price points. You just have to be around to see it.

The opposite is true. We know with certainty that the coins will not always be around, because they can be lost and cannot be replenished. Over a long enough time, there will be exactly 0 bitcoins around. And this is knowable right now.
 
Love so much that this is true. Magic the Gathering Online eXchange.

With your infinite wisdom parallax, should I get the crash fear and pull out with my current profits, or wait and see if it goes back up over a thousand?

your guess is as good as mine how the price will fluxuate next, but i wouldn't want to keep my money in it.
 

whitehawk

Banned
The opposite is true. We know with certainty that the coins will not always be around, because they can be lost and cannot be replenished. Over a long enough time, there will be exactly 0 bitcoins around. And this is knowable right now.
Yeah that part seems weird to me. So if you store them offline and lose them, they're gone forever. People lose cash all the time, but the government can print more.
 

Mudkips

Banned
- bitcoins were created as a proof of concept and were never intended to be used as an actual global currency, and are incapable of scaling to handle a high rate of transactions

- as a deflationary currency, there is no incentive for anyone to ever spend them, only to hoard them, which will prevent bitcoins from ever being adopted as a legit currency

- the most popular exchange is a modified trading site for magic the gathering cards

- exchanges and online wallet sites are frequently hacked, or simply taken offline by the site owner who then disappears with everyone's bitcoins

- cashing out any significant amount of money is a pipe dream

Wrong. Bitcoin scales out as much as it needs to.

Wrong. It's only deflationary if people lose their wallets. Rapid deflation is bad for currencies, but Bitcoin won't experience rapid deflation. Bitcoin is no more deflationary than gold is. People are increasingly using Bitcoin for transactions.

So what? Use whatever exchange you want, or no exchange. Exchanges have no bearing on the validity or utility of Bitcoin as a currency.

So what? Use whatever exchange you want, or no exchange. Exchanges have no bearing on the validity or utility of Bitcoin as a currency.

Pipe dream? Plenty of people have made massive loads of cash from Bitcoin. It's not a pipe dream. You can see it happening.


You're singing a very old, very salty song. Bitcoin is a valid currency and a valid investment. The fact that you missed the gravy train express doesn't invalidate all the other people who made insane profits, and it doesn't invalidate anyone else seeking to use Bitcoin directly or invest in it indirectly.

Yeah that part seems weird to me. So if you store them offline and lose them, they're gone forever. People lose cash all the time, but the government can print more.

If Bitcoin ever becomes so deflated that liquidity is a problem then people can simply mine wallets to recover those lost Bitcoins. This would be monumentally more difficult in terms of computational complexity, but it's a problem that won't need to be addressed for decades, if ever. Bitcoins deflation will be a slow process, and the market will have plenty of time to adjust. Bitcoins can be divided out to many, many decimal places.

Beyond that, Bitcoin can simply be extended. Someone can take the existing blockchain as of a certain time and use that as the basis for another crypto currency that generates more coins, has built in inflation, has a mechanism to expire wallets and return their contents to the network for dispersal via mining rewards, whatever. It's not hard, as evidenced by the dozens of crypto currencies out there. You just have to get people to use it.
 

erlim

yes, that talented of a member
This line of thought is also a classic folly, if you're considering cashing out already.

you might be pleasantly surprised next week as a bunch of people get verified after the recent news push.

also, sunday always sucks. people have the time to sit around and make irrational trades.


shhhh no dumping

only buy and hold now

Oh no I'm not going to cash out. In the end of the day it's not like a life-breaking gamble. If the axe falls the axe falls but at least I can sleep at night knowing I played with some bravado. I hope you're right though---does Sunday actually effect the bitcoin value? It's so weird to wake up or stay up late and always have a live feed of the value changing.
 
Oh no I'm not going to cash out. In the end of the day it's not like a life-breaking gamble. If the axe falls the axe falls but at least I can sleep at night knowing I played with some bravado. I hope you're right though---does Sunday actually effect the bitcoin value? It's so weird to wake up or stay up late and always have a live feed of the value changing.

It fell last Sunday from around $1000 to $880, but before that the biggest fall seems to have been just a couple of days before from the 19th ($900) till the 20th ($550).
 
D

Deleted member 13876

Unconfirmed Member
The opposite is true. We know with certainty that the coins will not always be around, because they can be lost and cannot be replenished. Over a long enough time, there will be exactly 0 bitcoins around. And this is knowable right now.

Again, that argument is meaningless. The mining rate is fairly fixed in stone and it is estimated the last coin will be mined in 2140. It's not a concern we'll ever face. Whether people will keep mining them is an entirely different thing altogether, but if they do new coins will be brought into existence for longer than we'll be alive. We know the sun will eventually stop burning, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't invest in solar energy.
 

tokkun

Member
EDIT: anyone know what prompted this... massive sell?

No one can say for sure, but I would venture this:

A major DarkNet market, Sheep Marketplace, scammed users out of tens of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins.

Another major DarkNet market, Black Market Reloaded, has closed temporarily. In the recent past, it suffered some serious security breaches.

A third, lesser DarkNet market, TorMarket has stopped accepting new members.

The other major DarkNet market, SilkRoad 2.0, is missing significant features.

The consequences:
--If the scammers from Sheep Marketplace decide to liquidate their stolen bitcoins, they could flood the market with supply.
--Without a safe marketplace, demand from the people who actually treated bitcoins as a currency is plummeting.

A few months ago when the original Silk Road and the Atlantis marketplaces closed in quick succession, we had a similar situation, and the price of bitcoin crashed. When new markets stepped up to fill the gap, the current surge in price occurred.

Will history repeat? It's hard to know. Speculators make up a larger part of the market now than they did then. People may be less willing to move to new markets after the scamming. Vendors who have lost money repeatedly may be wiped out or unwilling to take on the risk of going to a new market.
 

erlim

yes, that talented of a member
No one can say for sure, but I would venture this:

A major DarkNet market, Sheep Marketplace, scammed users out of tens of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins.

Another major DarkNet market, Black Market Reloaded, has closed temporarily. In the recent past, it suffered some serious security breaches.

A third, lesser DarkNet market, TorMarket has stopped accepting new members.

The other major DarkNet market, SilkRoad 2.0, is missing significant features.

The consequences:
--If the scammers from Sheep Marketplace decide to liquidate their stolen bitcoins, they could flood the market with supply.
--Without a safe marketplace, demand from the people who actually treated bitcoins as a currency is plummeting.

A few months ago when the original Silk Road and the Atlantis marketplaces closed in quick succession, we had a similar situation, and the price of bitcoin crashed. When new markets stepped up to fill the gap, the current surge in price occurred.

Will history repeat? It's hard to know. Speculators make up a larger part of the market now than they did then. People may be less willing to move to new markets after the scamming. Vendors who have lost money repeatedly may be wiped out or unwilling to take on the risk of going to a new market.

What kind of sucks is that this kind of information is not talked about on any of the normal financial news outlets or any of the news outlets, period. All I kept hearing about is ATM machines this, subway sandwiches that, China, China, China, but had no idea about any of the Darknet platforms.
 
They might be idiots but I'm sure the people that made thousands (heck millions in some cases) of bucks from this are happy idiots.

So? There are probably people who made millions trading Pogs or Beanie Babies too. There are always going to be people who can manipulate the market for their own profit, and they profit off the mass of people who think they stumbled onto a get-rich-quick scheme and try to ride and predict the roller coaster. But you never hear about those people because they don't run to reddit to talk about how stupid they were.
 

erlim

yes, that talented of a member
So? There are probably people who made millions trading Pogs or Beanie Babies too. There are always going to be people who can manipulate the market for their own profit, and they profit off the mass of people who think they stumbled onto a get-rich-quick scheme and try to ride and predict the roller coaster. But you never hear about those people because they don't run to reddit to talk about how stupid they were.

I don't think people could make millions off of beanie babies, maybe like a couple thousand if they really really had a high volume of extremely valuable beanie babies back in that era.
 
So? There are probably people who made millions trading Pogs or Beanie Babies too. There are always going to be people who can manipulate the market for their own profit, and they profit off the mass of people who think they stumbled onto a get-rich-quick scheme and try to ride and predict the roller coaster. But you never hear about those people because they don't run to reddit to talk about how stupid they were.
No one made no millions of no pogs, son!

But anyways, I'll still invite you to my yacht party, weekend_warrior.
 

Jacobi

Banned
Again, that argument is meaningless. The mining rate is fairly fixed in stone and it is estimated the last coin will be mined in 2140. It's not a concern we'll ever face.
Yep. We will be gone before Bitcoin will be gone.

--Without a safe marketplace, demand from the people who actually treated bitcoins as a currency is plummeting.
I can only tell from my personal experience, but people around me order more and more from BMR. There are also new dealers popping up here and there. IMO it's become too difficult to tell a simple reason...
 

Jacobi

Banned
And they are closing

http://www.reddit.com/r/reloaded/comments/1ru63m/bmr_officially_shutting_down/

Will your friends migrate to some new, untested marketplace? Or take their business to the streets?
Damn, the reason for this is horrible: Too many users for TOR! BMR worked really great for me after the closing of SR.

Some people don't have a choice though if they moved to a new city or something, they'll need a marketplace. Most people probably will get their shit from the streets again... And use a new marketplace, after they heard of good experiences with it.

edit: Oh, seems like they'll reopen??
 
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Deleted member 13876

Unconfirmed Member
People who made hundreds of thousands or whatever buying in early weren't savvy investors, they were lucky hobbyists no different than kids who bought the right issue of Spider-Man and sold it before 1,000,000 issues of the next big Spider-Man book were printed.

No, they sold it after a million issues of Spider-Man were printed. If they sold Amazing Fantasy 15 the year after it printed they'd have gotten pennies. I'm an expert on Spider-Man culture!
 

tokkun

Member
Can someone explain to me how a currency almost completely driven by speculation is a good investment?

This is more like buying 90's baseball cards and foil-cover comics. At least that's what it looks like from the sidelines. Prices go up dramatically, but only due to the hysteria over speculation.

People who made hundreds of thousands or whatever buying in early weren't savvy investors, they were lucky hobbyists no different than kids who bought the right issue of Spider-Man and sold it before 1,000,000 issues of the next big Spider-Man book were printed.

The way I look at it is that the deflation of bitcoin is basically a tax on drug dealers.

Let's say that BTC hypothetical continues appreciating in value, but at a steady rate. In this scenario, the people who are losing money on the appreciation are the people converting from BTC to some other currency. Aside from the speculators who cash out, this is drug dealers. They receive payment in BTC, and need to turn it around into a legal currency to replenish their stock. However, because drug dealing is a high margin enterprise, they may be willing to deal with losing a small percentage of their income to BTC appreciation.
 
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Deleted member 13876

Unconfirmed Member
You guys aren't buying Amazing Fantasy 15. You're buying whatever issue of Spider-Man happens to be out at the time because of Amazing Fantasy 15 existing.

Or at least that's what it looks like. I'm genuinely curious. There are a lot of blowhards talking about bitcoin and I actually hope someone could clear up how this is a good investment rather than an incredibly volatile and dangerous gamble.

Okay, I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here. The added paragraph helps a bit. I'm guessing the Amazing Fantasy 15 guys were the early adopters lucky enough to buy the random commodity. If so, I don't entirely disagree. These people were insanely lucky even if some of them did think it was going to end up this way because of ideological convictions. I can't imagine a kid buying a comic in that era thinking he'd be able to buy a house with it later on. As for your is it worth it or a dangerous gamble question: At this point, who knows? It's indeed volatile as fuck and I hard to assess value to it.

Now that we're still doing the comic book analogy thing, I mentioned earlier the cryptocurrency concept is like the character Gladiator. His powers are based on confidence, if he feels worthless, he'll be just that, and vice-versa.
 

diamount

Banned
The way I look at it is that the deflation of bitcoin is basically a tax on drug dealers.

Let's say that BTC hypothetical continues appreciating in value, but at a steady rate. In this scenario, the people who are losing money on the appreciation are the people converting from BTC to some other currency. Aside from the speculators who cash out, this is drug dealers. They receive payment in BTC, and need to turn it around into a legal currency to replenish their stock. However, because drug dealing is a high margin enterprise, they may be willing to deal with losing a small percentage of their income to BTC appreciation.

Drug users are not increasing/decreasing Bitcoin's price.
 
Again, that argument is meaningless. The mining rate is fairly fixed in stone and it is estimated the last coin will be mined in 2140. It's not a concern we'll ever face. Whether people will keep mining them is an entirely different thing altogether, but if they do new coins will be brought into existence for longer than we'll be alive. We know the sun will eventually stop burning, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't invest in solar energy.

The argument is not meaningless. Most bitcoins already exist. From here on out, deterioration will outstrip new "production," and at faster and faster rates as new production grows more and more slowly. As well, the loss of bitcoins will likely happen far more rapidly than you imagine. Regardless, the statement that I corrected was inaccurate. Mine was accurate. You can quibble about how near-term or long-term that problem is, but the fact remains that it is true. There will eventually be 0 bitcoins in the world. And bitcoins will be worthless far before it gets to that point, attributable in part to their inevitable decay.
 
Had some leftover BTC from when I mined some in 2009 just to check the whole thing out. (less than 0.7 left). Thanks to this insane spike up, they went from being worth $20 to $200. Cashed some in for $100 Amazon Gift card. Thank you free money!

Really wish I had kept the full 3 BTC I mined back then, instead of trading them in for like $20 at the time, since I wasn't really interested in the long-term application.
 
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Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
well until all the available bitcoins reaches 0 (which is in how much time again....??) I'll continue to have fun speculating.

managed to not panic and buy at the bottom of the sunday crash for bitcoin. took a hit on litecoin and bought it around 27 euro. it's up at 29 again now but watching it go to 19 was 'go downstairs and have coffee' time.

I'm going to hope that there should be an influx of new buyers this week after all the 'WHERE DO I BUY' from last week.

it's pretty amusing the people that come in and say 'lol idiots' repeatedly about bitcoin on a forum. I'm having fun speculating, but I'm pretty sure those 2 twins that got screwed out of facebook money by zuckerberg and built an entire business around investing in bitcoin are not TOTAL idiots.

There will eventually be 0 bitcoins in the world. And bitcoins will be worthless far before it gets to that point

this is what's annoying about you empty vessel, you talk like it's all a forgone conclusion. it's an entirely possible situation that another cryptocurrency picks up the torch, solves ALL of your issues with the currency and that becomes the new thing. At which point I wonder if you'll find a way to say 'haha I told you bitcoin would be worth nothing'?

cryptocurrency is the start of something new and weird on the internet, to argue that it's worthless when it's already the trade currency for massive EBAY for DRUGS websites proves its value right there. the anonymity for money transactions in a climate where everyone is getting more paranoid about big brother. I feel like you just ignore that and keep hammering on the 'but eventually they will run out!' point. They will, but we'll all be corpses well before then so who gives a shit really?
 
i won money at the roulette wheel, therefore playing roulette is guaranteed profit
With the exception of people who've had their bitcoins stolen, basically everyone who has invested has made a profit. I would play roulette with those odds.

That said, IMO the investment phase is long gone. Too many better alternatives now. A properly anonymous successor that is GPU-hard will gain traction (it may already exist...), and bitcoin proper will lose a lot of steam when that happens.
 

Feep

Banned
The argument is not meaningless. Most bitcoins already exist. From here on out, deterioration will outstrip new "production," and at faster and faster rates as new production grows more and more slowly. As well, the loss of bitcoins will likely happen far more rapidly than you imagine. Regardless, the statement that I corrected was inaccurate. Mine was accurate. You can quibble about how near-term or long-term that problem is, but the fact remains that it is true. There will eventually be 0 bitcoins in the world. And bitcoins will be worthless far before it gets to that point, attributable in part to their inevitable decay.
All matter collapses into black holes in 10^10^76 years bro

Better cash out
 

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
The fact that usable bitcoins trend to zero over time isn't nearly as important as the inability of bitcoin to properly expand in supply to meet demand, assuming that people wanted to make bitcoin work. It's like a village baker that can only expand production by a set amount while need for bread increases at a greater rate. Eventually people are going to be hungry. In currencies, people don't go without as much as the value increases and prices/wages go down, which is deflation.
 

wsippel

Banned
the chart refers to people dumb enough to invest in it
It's not necessary to invest real money though. You can mine some low-tier, low difficulty scrypt coins like Feather or something yourself and sell them for other crypto-currencies, which you then sell for real money. If you're clever and a bit lucky, you can even profit from the high volatility during the conversion. You most definitely won't get rich doing this, but you can't really lose anything either. My first test run made enough money to pay the electricity needed to continue mining for another few weeks, so I'm completely safe even if the market crashes and burns tomorrow.
 
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